Light-speed, Convention, and Creation

In recent years the Anisotropic Synchrony Convention cosmology of Dr. Jason Lisle has become more popular among creationists. At the 2018 International Conference on Creationism T.G. Tenev, J. Baumgardner, and M.F. Horstemeyer presented a model that was very similar. Dr. John Hartnett seems to have abandoned has own earlier Carmeli-based cosmology, and has posted a number of articles promoting the ASC as the current best solution to the distant-starlight problem (i.e., how we can see distant stars if they were created recently).

How feasible is the ASC model?

1. The Anisotropic Synchrony Convention
In Special Relativity, space, time, and motion are all relative to the observer, and not absolute. Hence one cannot synchronize distant clocks in an objective, absolute manner satisfying all observers.

Consequently, the one-way speed of light from observer A to observer B can't be measured directly, since this requires two synchronized clocks.  We can measure the speed of light only via a two-way average speed in two opposite directions (e.g., over the return path A-B-A), which relies on only one clock. 

In Special Relativity it is usually assumed that the speed of light is isotropic (i.e., the same in all directions). But this is just a convention. One could explain all the observed relativistic effects just as well by taking the speed of light to be anisotropic (i.e., direction-dependent), provided the average two-way speed is c (c is about 300,000 km/sec).

On such grounds Dr. Lisle (2010) upholds the Anisotropic Synchrony Convention (hereafter denoted ASC) that the speed of light is infinitely fast when moving towards the earth, and c/2 when moving away from the earth, with a two-way average of c.  This solves the distant-starlight problem, since light from distant galaxies arrives at the earth virtually instantaneously. We thus see the galaxies as they now are.

2. Do We Need the ASC?

According to Lisle stars and galaxies were created in mature form 6000 years ago, pretty much the same as now observed.

One might well ask, if mature creation is needed anyway, why not simply postulate the mature creation of the entire celestial universe? Then there is no need of the ASC.

But this entails that the light we observe from distant stars was created “in transit”, and never actually originated from those stars. Then the apparent history (e.g., supernova explosions) conveyed by such light never really happened. This, Dr. Lisle objects, undermines the reliability of our senses, and makes God deceptive.

Yet, Lisle’s more limited mature creation seems vulnerable to a similar charge of deception. For example, galaxies seem to exhibit evidence of past collisions, supernova explosions, huge jets of matter and radiation, etc.

However, one might deny that mature creation really involves divine deception (see my post Would God Deceive Us?). Or one might hold that mature creation need not be instantaneous, but could involve (miraculous and accelerated) process (see my post Rapidly Matured Creation), enabling the distant starlight we see to have actually originated from their stars on Day 4. 

Either approach makes Dr. Lisle’s ASC solution redundant.

3. Does Light Have a One-way Speed?

Are we to believe that light really travels infinitely fast towards the earth? That would be a remarkable hypothesis, seemingly highly implausible, but nevertheless frustratingly difficult to disprove.

But that isn't what the ASC affirms. On the contrary, Dr. Lisle contends that the one-way speed of light is not a property of the universe. He writes:

Those unfamiliar with Relativistic physics are deeply inclined to believe in absolute time and space. And therefore it will seem intuitive to them that the one-way speed of light should be an objective, invariant, and measurable quantity. But the universe is not constructed that way...God has constructed the universe is such a way that length, duration, and synchronization are relative to a given observer. Our inability to measure the one-way speed of light is not due to a lack of creativity on our part...Rather it is due to the way God has constructed spacetime. (Lisle 2010, p.203)

We could therefore choose the speed of incoming light to be anywhere between c/2 and infinity, but our choice is merely a human convention, like choosing to measure lengths in meters or yards. Physically it makes no difference.

As a convention, the ASC is thus physically equivalent to Einstein’s isotropic convention. Hence, Lisle’s creation model is physically equivalent to God creating the universe 14 billion years ago, starting at the furthest galaxies, and then creating inwards towards the earth, so that the first light from all galaxies reaches the earth simultaneously on Day 4, 6000 years ago.

Yet, if the one-way speed of light is not a property of the universe, it is not even physically meaningful to ask how long it took starlight to travel to the earth. Therefore Dr. Lisle’s proposal is not so much a solution to the distant-starlight problem but more a dismissal of the question as physically meaningless.

4. Relativity: Einstein versus Lorentz

In postulating that the one-way speed of light is not a physical property Dr. Lisle follows Einstein’s rather positivistic interpretation of Special Relativity that limits reality to what humans can observe.

Einstein held that Special Relativity led to a four-dimensional “block universe” view of space-time in which past, present, and future are equally real, and where the flow of time is just an illusion. This is known also as static time, eternalism, or the B-theory of time.

This clashes with the common-sense notion of time as dynamic, where only the present really exists, the past has existed, and the future does not yet exist. This is known also as presentism, or the A-theory of time. Presentism entails that there exists a universal “now”, corresponding to the state of the universe that exists at each instant. This in turn presupposes absolute time, absolute space, and absolute simultaneity.

We can, in fact, interpret Special Relativity in such absolute terms. The Lorentzian view of relativity (named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz) holds there exists a universal frame of reference, with respect to which light travels at speed c in any direction. For any observer moving with respect to this frame, lengths will contract and clocks will slow down, so that the speed of light is always measured to be c, but space and time itself are not distorted as in Special Relativity. [See, for example, the book "Einstein, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity" (2008), edited by William Craig & Quentin Smith].

Surely, for God, who is omnipresent and omniscient, there must be such a universal “now” for the universe at each instant of time. Such a “God’s view” of things would define absolute time, space, motion, and simultaneity.

It seems incoherent to think that an omniscient God, Creator of the entire universe, could not know how long it takes starlight to reach the Earth--no matter how unknowable that may be to us mere mortals.

On such grounds Dr. William Craig contends that the Lorentzian approach to relativity is more consistent with theism.

Lorentzian Relativity is empirically equivalent to Special Relativity, but it takes the one-way speed of light to be physically meaningful, and have speed c, quashing Lisle's solution to the distant-starlight problem.

5. The ASC and the Bible

If it is not physically meaningful to ask how long it took light from a celestial event to reach us, such events can be timed only by when we actually see them. Consider, for example, what Dr. Hartnett writes about sunlight:

Based on the distance to the sun and the canonical speed of light, c, the light travel time from the sun to Earth is about 8.3 minutes. But, and here’s the problem, it has been suggested that light from the core of the sun takes about 170,000 years to reach the surface. This is because gamma photons, generated in the thermonuclear fusion reaction at the sun centre, undergo a random walk as they are absorbed and re-emitted by nuclei on their way to the surface...

There is only one biblical creationist cosmogony that I know which can explain it, and it does it easily. It is Jason Lisle’s ASC model. That ASC model says that the physics of Einstein allows us to time events as in the Days of Creation, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. And we time those events by when an Earth observer could see the events happening.2 Thus when the light from the sun first arrived at the Earth it was Day 4. It does not matter, it is even irrelevant, how long the light took to travel... 

This is the language of the Bible. Events occur when they are observed. The sun was first seen by Earth observers on Day 4 and that defines when the sun was created. That event occurred 3 days after God created the Earth on Day 1 about 6 thousand years ago.

Note that the random walk involves two-way light-speeds, so that the 170,000 year time-span applies even using the ASC. Thus the ASC seems to concord with the notion of a young earth in an old universe.

Here Dr. Hartnett considers the ASC as primarily a clock convention that dates an astronomical event to when it is observed at the earth, rather than when it actually occurred. In this view, Genesis 1 uses phenomenal language that equates the creation date of the Sun to when it was first observed by an observer an earth.

One difficulty with the phenomenal language view is that Gen.1 is in fact written from God's perspective. We are told, "God made the two great lights...and the stars...and set them in the expanse...And God saw that it was good" (Gen.1:16-18). Since God is omniscient and omnipresent, the events recorded in Gen.1 should refer to actual facts, rather than mere human appearances. 

Moreover, the Sun and stars are placed in the expanse, which was created only on Day 2. So there is no place where celestial objects could exist before Day 2. Further, if the stars only became visible on earth on Day 4, why does Gen.1:16 not use the same verb "appear" that was used of the dry land on Day 3? Finally, Ex.20:11 clearly states that God made everything in heaven and earth in 6 days.

Dr. Lisle contends that the Bible uses the ASC, since the stars became visible on Earth nearly instantaneously after their creation, on that very same day. However, the rapid visibility of the stars is explained equally well by other theories, such as a rapidly matured creation.

Hence, the Biblical evidence is better explained by some form of mature creature than by the ASC.

We could rescue this approach by postulating that the speed of light really is infinite towards the earth and c/2 away from the earth. It should then be better called the Anisotropic Synchrony Assumption. This involves interpreting relativity within an absolute reference frame that gives the earth a special status. Physically, that seems very counter-intuitive. Why should light move at such vastly different speeds in opposite directions? And why should the earth be the special point of attraction for light? Since, as we noted, only the two-way speed of light can be measured, there can be no empirical proof or disproof of this conjecture. Hence, it must be based on non-empirical considerations, such as the ability to solve a theological puzzle. The weakness is that it seems to make Anisotropic Synchrony Convention – or Assumption - merely ad hoc mathematical models without any physical rationale.

Finally, note that the Anisotropic Synchrony Assumption still requires the mature creation of stars and galaxies.

Conclusion
In sum, it seems to me that the ASC model is not a viable solution to the distant-starlight problem. First, it is unnecessary since the ASC  model needs mature creation, and the notion of a rapidly matured creation already solves the problem. Second, it doesn't really solve the problem, but merely dismisses it as physically meaningless. Third, it relies on a positivist interpretation of Special Relativity, whereas the empirically equivalent Lorentzian Relativity accords better with theism. Finally, it leads to a phenomenal interpretation of Gen.1 that contradicts the plain reading of the Biblical text.

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